Okay, I’ll say it right now: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was easily one of the cutest movies I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and thankfully not the kind that left me vomiting a bucketful of sugar onto the dance floor hours later at Club R09. No, this movie was definitely the kind of sweet that I liked: tasteful, funny, and firmly grounded in reality. Where most romantic comedies need to really try to earn my respect, this one shined effortlessly with a truth and honesty about it that I haven’t seen in a teen-centric movie…ever, basically. And that in itself is what makes it so worth the ten dollar movie ticket.

Sure, this whole movie was a circumstantial improbability, if not an utter impossibility. The chances of a guy and a girl meeting, both desperate enough to kiss a random stranger, the guy’s friends being the nicest, most supportive gay guys to ever walk the planet (who just happen to have a box full of women’s clothing in the back of their truck), and the girl’s friend being a crazy drunk who is lost in the city and then subsequently found are far beyond ludicrous, to say the least. Still, the realism of this movie doesn’t lie in the circumstance, but the human interactions during the events of one crazy New York night. Everyone knows that Michael Cera has the “That Awkward But Nice Boy Next Door Who Would Totally Bring You Flowers If Your Mom Died” nailed (a fact that I don’t fault him for like everyone else seems to; the kid plays his strengths), but throw in Kat Dennings and suddenly Nick and Norah really come to life as a guy who just can’t get over his ex-girlfriend and a girl who is looking for a way out of her father’s shadow. It’s the little things that make these two (as well as the rest of the cast) sparkle with something other than the typical Hollywood Teenager Sheen that’s taken over movies focused on young adults today. Girls are not always strong when they want to be. Guys are not always suave when they wish they were. Even Tris, the token Beautiful Mean Girl Ex, manages to show some cracks in the shiny, hard veneer of her personality from time to time. The beauty in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is that I believed every single conversation, human action (and subsequent reaction), and awkward moment the movie had to offer.

Too many people seem to want to compare this movie to Juno, and while I agree that they’re stylistically similar in that “cute, quirky indie” way, I really feel as though such an assessment is selling Nick and Norah far short of the love it deserves. It really has its own unique charm to it, a little out there but altogether hilarious and touching as a result. If you’re not in love with (almost) every character and (almost) every situation and the way it was handled by the time the credits roll, you officially have no soul.